Enraptured

There has to be something more to this. When he fought his way to the top, drenched in the blood of victory, he believed it was worth it. It had to be worth it — his freedom, the chance to make his own name, the opportunity to become powerful. To be respected.

It took him centuries. Uriel, a mercilessly trained warrior and General of the Pantheon forces. It would have taken a lesser being millennia to even reach the lowest rung on the lowest of ladders, and yet.

And yet.

This Duke — this demon, this villain, this ingenious bastard — has abdicated his seat for nothing at all. There has to be something more to it. There has to be some sort of secret plan, an explanation for why a being as old and accomplished as the Duke Barbatos would abandon the riches and infamy that Hell provided him in service of being little more than a simple childminder on the surface. After all, what does Barbatos see to gain from educating the masses in the ways of their limited knowledge spheres? The things someone like Barbatos could do in the unholy realms are unheard of: evil and cruel beyond belief, the sorts of things that are told as tall tales to little children in order to keep them in check. He never wanted for anything, and if he did, he could ask and it would be presented to him on a silver platter.

Uriel scratches his nose, smudging ink from his angelfeather quill across his face. In the most private, secret parts of his mind, he can almost begin to admit that he would have given himself up to Barbatos, too. Maybe. For a moment. But the thought never fully forms, and so he continues to write his correspondence, manage his armies, and keep one all seeing eye on the devil that once was.

His most recent update: groceries. Human grocers do sell a number of risky substances, and the plastic bag was lumpy enough that Uriel couldn’t quite see what was inside it and when he went in to ask the cashier for the previous customer’s receipt, please, he’s a good friend, he had promptly been banned from the store. And an almond croissant from a local café in a paper bag — Uriel has heard that almonds contain a compound that can be broken down into cyanide under the right circumstances. Perhaps a mass poisoning, then. He should be on his guard. There’s no point dragging in his troops if they’re fighting a chemical for an enemy.

It doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, even someone as meticulous as Barbatos will slip up. He can’t maintain the saintly teacher act forever, and when the mask falls, Uriel will be right there to catch it.

He has to be, or all of this will be for nothing, and that is the greatest evil that Barbatos could inflict upon anyone.